In Our Garden

We released lots of ladybugs in our garden to serve as good pests.



In addition, we are growing our own mushrooms!



And, lots of other stuff. Can you identify it?

What Exactly Have We Been Doing Lately?

Well, the girls and D went skiing and tubing in Vermont:

The girls have been working on an art project that seemed to take forever -- it is multimedia with watercolor, pencil, and colored pencil:



They have begun learning how to draw figures and I hope to post pictures soon.

They have been swimming (a lot). They both are swimming a national competition this weekend:





They have been researching HPV and making a video (the last 30 seconds of the video is cut off for some reason):


They have been researching Ruth Handler:

And, in their spare time they have both read about 5 books in the past 3 weeks.

So --- even though we haven't been posting, we have been busy. In addition to posting weekly challenges and solutions at Think! and teaching some seminars on Government and Women's History, I have been working as a volunteer for the Endangered Species Coalition, creating and compiling educational materials for Endangered Species Day. I have also been doing some book reviews for the Allied Cultures Against Discrimination. I plan to teach another seminar on technology in April. D has been working hard and when home, he has planted lots of things in our garden: lettuce, carrots, onions, blueberries, and tomatoes. We are planning a family reunion for the T family to coincide with the Relay for Life in May. We have 3 happy survivors to walk in the survivor lap! So, that's what we've been doing. Maybe we'll get back to posting more regularly in the next few months.

CO2 Hunter

Read about this amazing project and check out the graph in the article that indicates CO2 levels over the past 10 years.

Sad news though as of this afternoon.

Cool Astronomy

Read about this green comet.

Alaska is Disappearing

Read this article about what is happening to Alaska, then think about what you can do to address global warming.

Signed: Your friendly green advocates

In Honor of Darwin's Birthday last week

We checked out this devolve tool available on the web and devolved T and H. It was pretty interesting.

Here's T

Here's H

What did you look like 3.7 million years ago?

Great Backyard Bird Count

10:00-11:00 Sunday AM

1 robin
3 blue gray gnatcatchers
2 rusty blackbirds
6 mallard ducks
2 white ducks (don't know the name of them)
4 herring gulls
2 chipping sparrows

Will try to get pictures next time.

You can still count until Feb. 16 or enter your data here after that.

Happy Valentine's Day

Unusual mating rituals.

What insects do.

Earth from the Air

These pictures and links about them are amazing!

Cool Science

Read about this!

Trivia from Science Friday

Useless but amusing calendar milestone to note this week - UNIX timestamp hits 1234567890 on Fri. (Feb 13, 6:31:30 pm Eastern.)

What Slums Can Teach Us

Click above and read the article. Important food for thought.

The Color of Your Walls

Blue or Red?

Great Explanation of Climate Cycles

Richard Alley's Orbital and Climate Dance

Another One.

The most dangerous cake

This weekend we tried this:

5 Minutue Chocolate Mug Cake

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips
a splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Add the dry ingredients to mug and mix well. And egg and mix again.
Add chocolate chips and vanilla extract and mix again. Put mug in microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug but don't be alarmed.




Allow to cool. Eat. And, why is it dangerous?

Because now you are only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of day or night!



The girls' review: a bit chewy for cake. It was still fun to cook!

Scales -- Think!

For Think! this week, the girls made a scale. You can read about it here.

Conveniently, this scale project also fits with this week's unplugged theme: balance.

Really Cool School

We just read about this school built of recyled materials.

Some New, Some Old, Some Different Green Ideas for the New Year

In 2008, we tried to be more green. We installed 2 rain barrels, installed recycled wood flooring in the house, purchased and used an indoor composter, installed dual flush toilets and tankless water heaters in our home, stopped purchasing plastic water bottles, purchased glass containers and eliminated all plastice in the kitchen, purchased banto boxes to use for travelling and lunches instead of plastic baggies, switched to compostable garbage bags, switched to recycled toothbrushes and razors, switched to using only recycled paper notebooks, joined freecycle, and donated to carbonfund.org to offset our airplane travel and energy consumption to make us carbon neutral.

We have made a commitment to be more green again in 2009. In addition to following through by using some of our Christmas gifts such as reusable produce bags, reusable drycleaning bags, and a dry cleaning rack for towels (which we use a lot at this house), we want to be better activists for the environment. So, we're starting by sharing some ideas for a Green 2009.

1. Stop using ALL plastic bags (grocery, department stores, produce, laundrymat,sandwich bags, etc). You can even get reusable vegetable bags here and biodegradable trash bags here.
2. Recycle number 5 plastic by sending it here.
3. Recycle your Brita filter here.
4. Send your wine corks (not the plastic ones) here.
5. Compost at home by using this.
6. Freecycle rather than throwing things away.
7. Replace your paper towels with these.
8. Save your Christmas cards and reuse them next year by pasting a label over this year's text (we are still working on this project for our 08 Xmas cards).
9. Get a rain barrel and use the captured water in your garden.
10. Recycle your shoes here.
11. Find out what other things you can recycle here.
12. Buy recycled and recyclable toothbrushes and razors here.
13. Stop using plastic at the drycleaners, by getting reusable drycleaning bags here.
14. Buy ecofriendly products ranging from toilet paper and detergents to eye glasses to clothing and paper made from poop.

Apples

We received a box of apples for the holidays. What is really cool about them is that they are antique apples. You may be saying ewwwww, but it is not what you think -- they are NOT more than 100 years old!

Antique apples are apples whose origins date back in time. There are approximately 14,000 known varieties of apples. About 7,000 of them come from Russia.

The apples we got came from Kilcherman's Christmas Cove Farm. It is one of the original antique apple farms in the United States.

So, last night we tasted our first apple: the woodpecker apple. It dates back to 1847 when it was discovered in Middlesex, Massachusetts. Why is it called the Woodpecker apple? Well, because woodpeckers liked the tree and ate the apples! The apple was beautiful! It was also delicious. Our review is: probably good for pies, a bit tart, a bit mealy, wonderfully fresh, and good for dessert!

Green Building

We are all fascinated by green building. For the girls it started a few years ago with a project on sustainable architecture. They designed their own green homes and did scale drawings and models of them. Then, we bought a solar home kit and did some of the hundred or so projects that came with it. I'm not sure when D and I first became interested but we are. Anyway, I've collected some interesting pictures and articles. Check out these houses. And, these. And this roof. And how about living in one of these? Awesome, eh?

And, we just saw a clip on these houses -- want one?